Archive Page 2
We have four traditional senses of taste. Sweet, sour, bitter and Reiss. We also have a fifth, umami, which is the taste of ’savoury meaty deliciousness’; about as close a translation to the Japanese word that us poor fat-tongued Western devils can manage.
The Japanese discovered umami in the 60’s using a battery of pHD students, a 12″ slab of tofu, an original copy of Zelda on the NES, 1 pair of rubber gloves, 14 feet of inner tubing, an brunette ladies wig, some kind of miniature trebuchet, a Cadbury’s creme egg, a small sample of Kendo Nagasaki’s sweat and a 2nd hand George Foreman grill.
‘..in Nagasaki they love …’
They then televised the experimental proceedings in a Banzai-style game show where half the students ended up with severe facial growths and a date with Peaches Geldolf and the other half exploded, showering the crowd with savoury meaty deliciousness. The fallout was blamed for the attacks that followed on Tokyo by Godzilla, his umami receptors going wild.
After Godzilla was dispatched by Matthew Broderick research continued in earnest. This newly discovered Umami zone, the alledged U-Spot (not a real biological location - THE U-SPOT IS A MYTH EVERYONE - A MYTH ), is stimulated by glutamates and hence the erstwhile enjoyment of MSG by our oriental cousins and accidental occidentals. In fact MSG has been front cover Glutamate of the Month for the last 5 years straight. Yum yum mild hand tremors.
‘MSG lives in the mansion with me’
So all good for umami. She’s got his stimulators in a shaker and newly found recognition in the cookery arena. But what she lacks currently is the emotional metaphor. People can be sweet, sour and bitter and in the case of Captain Haddock, even salty. But I’m still waiting to describe someone as being a bit umami this morning because their train was late. What is this emotion of savoury meaty deliciousness? Is it vacant moodiness, angry frustration, sweaty fear or even wild-eyed drunkeness? I cannot say.
Captain Ad-hoc
So my plea is for these eggheads to discover more tastes and if this is not possible then I want to have synesthesia for a few hours, have all my senses miswired and taste colours and smell textures. I want to confirm that blue feels like Smurf and freshly grilled hamburgers have that whiff of triangles.
And then get really drunk and discover that abomination tastes of that savoury meaty deliciousness that only umami can sound like.
Quick TechniCian entry as have had a pile emails about the iPhone. I bet there will be about 500,000 posts exactly the same as this and I hate being topical/geek but it’s a one-off.
I reckon v.cool but possible horribly expensive.
What’s innovative:
Multi-press touchscreen
OSesque + widgets
Anti face-smear sensor
What’s cool
Ace screen and horizontal/vertical tilt detection.
iTunes + CoverFlow interface.
SMS threads + visual voicemail
Finally possibly a keyboard-less phone that works.
Push Yahoo email that just appears but I WANT GMAIL
What’s uncool
$599 on a 2 year contract
No expandable memory, only a 2 megapixel camera, slightly wide and not 3G.
Fear of insta-mugging
Who is this targeted at? Cityfolk? It ain’t a Blackberry. The iPod masses? - um $599. The techfreaks and applewhores? (of which I am both). Probably.
Job has possibly made the ultimate gadget but will he really take 1% mobile share as he predicts? Could this be his Newton and be too soon. TOO SOON!!! I’m holding out for the 80 gig video iPhone styled iPod. With a side-order of of wi-fi.
1920×1080. At least if I get a HDTV for my 360 - wait wait that just isn’t funny at all. No geek jokes this year. That’s the first resolution. Next is to either get good enough on Pro Evo Soccer on XBox Live to finally beat someone under 15 or just retire in quiet disgrace. 3rd is to write at least 2 posts a week. My solitary effort in December might have got 10 comments, 11 diggs and endless personal shame but left the remaining 30 days as empty as Britney Spears’ knicker drawer.
Additionally I will stop thinking it’s funny to make a dog poop out of chocolate cake, walk down the street on New Year’s Eve, pretend to pick it off the floor and eat it in front of my friend who was so horrified he slapped it from my hand, freaked out and almost gave me the lectures of Hepatitis and poop breathe.
Cake not cack.
And finally I will make more time in the packed schedule to stop watching high quality US comedies and drama and settle down for some brain numbing, kebab baring, wife beating reality TV this year. I’ll look to coldturkey my addiction to The Office US, House, 24, Lost, Heroes and Prison Break and get ready for the first in a plethora of panopticon pleasures with this year’s Celebrity Big Brother.
I was fearsomely addicted to series 1 and 3 of normal Big Brother (Nasty Nick puts Prison Break’s Michael Scofield to shame) and my proposed tactics if I ever was to be snared and caged like a mentally deranged polar bear were well documented on Fidel Gastro’s back in 2003.
A) Constantly swear and libel celebrities (especially Donna Air). I will take a deep breath every morning and let it go. Sitting in the corner I’ll be dribbling obscenities like a tourettic monkey with SARS. Everyone in the house will hate me but the public will never see it. I will be nominated every week but never voted out.
When I reach the final two, the Sun will proclaim ‘Hidden Asian Shocks Nation’.
B) Piss in the milk every night.
Big Brother: “Day 32. 12.30 am. Everyone is asleep except Cian. He is urinating in the semi-skimmed again “
The general public will hate me but the contestants will never find out. As they say each morning ‘Mmmh has this milk gone off?’, I will sit knowing I will never be nominated. When I reach the final two I will go out in the blaze of golden glory.
The Sun run a hate campaign during the entire event. “Milk Pisser Must Go”
Additionally I am superextremely excited that 80’s superlegends, A-Team’s Dirk Benedict and Jackson 5’s Jermaine Jackson, are appearing. With a little imagination I could see a tribute act to the much hunted A-Team being setup after the series is over as part of a new reality TV show called ‘Let’s make A-Team’.
I picture Jermaine as the Face (I ain’t no racist yo), Dirk as Col. John “Hannibal” Smith, Jo O’Meara from S Club as “B.A.” Baracus and newly gay H from Steps as Capt. H.M. “Howling Mad” Murdock. And Dirk as Lt. Starbuck. And the robot from Buck Rogers as Col. Decker.
“biddy biddy biddy - oh fuck, a cabbage firing tank”
“We’re free! I wish I could just jump in the water and live like a fish.”
“Shut up fool, you ain’t no fish!”
“I love it when a plan comes together”
“Milk Pisser MUST GO”
Thankfully no Happy Ending
Published by nospam.cian December 3rd, 2006 in News and LOLOLO. 11 Comments2 weeks, 0 posts, £0.15 in AdSense and 98 visitors looking for ‘naked men’ on MSN Search arriving to Fidel Gastro’s (at least when I started writing this) - therefore if it’s naked men you want then it’s tales of naked men you’ll get.
A few weeks ago I was in Marrakesh eating mounds of yellow couscous, babbling Eddie Izzard-esque french to the local tat salesmen (’le sange est dans l’arbe‘) and being chased by hordes of vagrant children like a paedophilic Pied Piper of Hamleys. At the end of my trip I decided to try and chill out and visit a Moroccan spa known as a Hamman. Notice the word ‘man’ at the end - more of that to come.
Stop. Hamman Time.
Entering these Arabian baths on the outskirts of the Medina I was reverently ushered into the main bath by a large mustachioed local brute looking like a cross between Borat and Fatima Whitbread and instructed to strip immediately. Instantly the air of bucolic relaxation shattered and I felt like I had just been dumped at the entrance of Fox River Penitentiary and now I had to spend my waking hours protecting my ass. Literally.
+ 
= FutureLove PrisonSex
Debagging, but keeping my kecks on, I was marched to another holding area. This room was empty, caking hot with steam rising from the stone floor and seemed like it was to be my solitary confinement for my remaining time. The newly assumed warden barked ‘you sit’ and then left me on the floor without a bouncy ball in sight. After a few moments I decided that this must be the steam room and I’d be there alone for the next 1/2 hour.
I’d be wrong.
5 minutes later the door opens and sweet Jesus, I’ve got a cell mate. Not a friendly ‘hey we’ll be buddies and try and get over the wall’ but the big bad Gorilla in the Mist, my nickname is Haywire, ‘I think you’re got a pretty mouth’ and ‘please god don’t kill me with a sharpened comb’ roomie from hell, as in walks in Fatima sporting a smile, a pair of Speedos and a mustache.
I’m bringing SexyBack
I immediately sat bolt upright. He marches across the room, picks up a cheap plastic bucket from the corner and empties its contents of freezing cold water on my head. Images of Rambo First Blood came flooding back along with adage of ‘kicking someone’s ass the first day or being someone’s bitch’. Before I had a chance to shank him with a sharpened spoon, he had soaped his hands up and told me to turn over. This was it. It was over. But to my surprise he started to wash me bare handed and then got some scrubbing gloves and attacked me like a scrambled egg caked saucepan giving me a vigorously good rub down.
Inappropriately skirting and brushing no-fly zones he then moved to the massage section. This involved plenty of oil and basically wrestling-stroke-gymnastics-stroke-me. Vague memories of sitting on his knees, bent backwards with my head between his legs and then getting rolled into a ball with his face on my chest and then much slapping. At several points I was thinking ‘he could just stick it in me’ and I started to cry inside.
The Pacific Rim not to be confused with my specific ring.
When I opened my eyes it was all over and I was gingerly walking out to showers. I really couldn’t take much more gayness and it was at this point he got the oranges out. I almost bolted, blindfearing a Daily Mail front page feature with an orange in my mouth and a stocking over my head but decided to hold my ground in imbecilic defiance.
15 orange related injuries in the UK last year.
It was a stand off. Me in my pants. Him in his Speedos. I had nothing but my ripening sense of shame and he had a whole orange. Then out of nowhere he pulls out a knife. He brought a goddamn knife to a fruit fight. While I started to try and remember where to take a stabbing, he started to segment the oranges and began to advance upon me.
I shut my eyes. When I opened them he was rubbing me down with these citrus fruit loofahs like I was duck ready for the oven. After the marinading I went to the showers (by myself) and scrubbed myself clean both mentally and dermatologically for several minutes before running for the door, throwing fistfuls of Dirhams at the staff and into a cab back to the Medina with a single tear running down my cheek.
After a few days I’ve decided this was my most gay fruit related non-homosexual experience ever. If you can beat that please chuck it in the comments.
A new section for my site which I’ve spent the last 2 weeks building in earnest for launch.
TechniCian (feel the pun) will be covering technology related news and reviews of unnecessary consumer electronics I have bought recently; on a whim, with a grin or in the bin.
Other new subsites could include MagiCian, where I discuss 1980’s conjurers and cheap parlour tricks; ObstetriCian where I’ll use Google Womb to map upcoming pregnancies and even PhysiCian where I’ll look at either Hooke’s Law or prescribing 2 Nurofens every 4 hours but not on a empty stomach thank you.
Piff-paff-poof; eat your heart out Gandalf
Anyway the reason for this section was that my technomania was compounded last night after seeing the 2 hr long Sony advert, Casino Royale. I have now been struck with a sublimino-compulso-techno-a-go-go urge to buy a Sony NW-HD5 Net Walkman, a SonyEricsson T68, K800i and M600 and somekind of Vaio ultra-slim laptop. As well as, of course, a 2007 Ford Mondeo and a silenced Walther PPK. And Eva Green.
It got so bad I was half-expecting Bond to spend 40 minutes playing NBA Live’07 on the PS3 during the film and when he was actually asked ‘Rolex?’ he’d reply ‘Omega but if Sony made watches I’d buy a Sony. Wait - my PSP has a clock on it, I don’t need this watch at all!’
Sony SIXAXIS wireless joypad - James Bond’s video game controller of choice
So moving onto my new section and the first review of many, I present…
TechniCian’s Product of the Week:
The new ultra tiny 2nd Generation iPod Shuffle. £59.99
Review.
I don’t know where it is. It’s that small.
I’m in eager anticipation of the announcements for this year’s whopping City bonuses, the bouncy hyperbole around the amounts being paid and the reports of gratuitous, wanton splurging by M&A bankers around London. Daily Mail reports…
The obsceneness of this year’s bonus payouts was highlighted as one City banker took home £4million in 10 pence pieces, the co-principality of Andorra and 14kgs of Madonna’s toenail clippings. He casually stated when interviewed ‘I’m really not sure what to do with my bonus this year. I might start a Fabergé egg smashing club in Notting Hill on Wednesday nights and have Andorra laser-excised from Europe and floated 20 miles off Cornwall as a weekend disco retreat. Those toenails? I might hire Lindsay Lohan to eat these damn things’
‘On top of a pile of money, with many beautiful ladies.’Indeed a large group of Goldman Sachs bankers caused outrage on Thursday night as they spent £100,000 on a single bacon butty and a can of Tizer at Gordon Ramsey’s Claridges. Gordon’s press release stated ‘They asked what the most expensive thing on the menu was - I said I could charge them £100k for a school packed lunch and they agreed. What a result’.
But this was outdone by 2 Deutsche Bank employees who paid £250,000 to dine on Chairman Mao’s embalmed head and drink a small vial of Salvador Dali’s urine at the hyper-expensive eatery Sketch last Wednesday. The owner of Sketch said ‘Wednesday’s special usually is a plate featuring parts of a dead communist leader so this was no different from any normal Wednesday night bill. We pride ourselves on sourcing the best and most unique ingredients from around the world and Mao’s head is a true gastronomic treat.’
‘yum yum mao head’
As extreme wealth enters the pockets of the under-priviledged and inventive spenders we will probably see the impact on the housing market. Estate Agents around London are being bombarded with requests for ever-expensive living. A Foxton’s insider said recently ‘I get three or four calls a week seeing if the Hanging Garden’s of Babylon have come back onto the market. I do tell them it’s probably likely given the way market is moving and then try to down sell them. Hopefully they go without discovering that the property probably never existed and if it did it would be a 2600 year old ruin. To be honest this is one of our common marketing tactics we use today.”
I repeat - breathless anticipation. Kings of Bling - I await your triumphs being force fed to me in every media orifice. Go forth and spend. Spend like the wind.
*I’ve realized that Acute Spine Implosion seems like the sister disease of the life-threatening fictitious condition Acidic Throat Melting. Yes the very same ailment which I quizzed Coca Cola Inc. on it’s likelihood after mixing it’s Vanilla and Lemon diet products. Biomedical evidence, email transcripts and hasty PR statements here.
First personal post in a while after my shockingly topical Richard Hammond one a few weeks ago; now suffering from an imploded spine and unable to think of any remark, retort or riposte I am forced to write about myself.
Acute spine implosion* is what I’ve self-diagnosed myself with after doing my back in and having to shuffle round the house like Richard Prior circa ‘96 without the self-cognac-immolation he generously gave himself
I’m walking like a cross between these two boys
Being laid out horizontally for days on end with nothing but the internet, bittorrents and my DSlite for company and apathetically playing Nintendogs looking for the ‘non-fatally maul local 5 year old scally’ option but failing miserably everytime; all has kept me away from Fidel Gastro’s and the delight the site gives to millions.
In my time out of action I’ve spent watching half of films. I watched half of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, half of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean 2′, half of ‘The Black Dahlia’ and half of ‘Block Party’. What did I end up with? A pair of films in total about a hill-billy environmentalist fighting the Kraken, slashing 1940’s Hollywood starlets and hosting Kanye West and Fugees led street gigs. I’m in a real need of some Ritalin. And Flintstone’s chewable morphine.
Skynet, Transformers, Yo Sushi. All examples when we hand over control to the machines we end up in the shit. Giant transforming conveyor belt sushi robots from the future is what we are going to have to contend with and I say enough. Enough with all the robots and enough with overpriced crappy fatty tuna nigiri.
More than meets the eye
But we are almost there; we have surrendered ourselves to our robot overlords as more and more we are becoming agents of the machines, performing actions the robots at Google HQ cannot do. Tagging images on flickr, labelling videos on Youtube - these are all things not even the T-1000 can perform and what many internet companies are actively encouraging us to do.
Amazon goes once step further and actually pays for this; their Mechanical Turk site allows their automated systems to dish out micro-jobs to humans who are bored and willing to name automotive parts for 5 cents an image. This quite innovative idea is actually named after a wonderous chess playing contraption which wowed and astounded the royal courts of Austria in the 18th Century but turned out just to be a dwarf locked in a cupboard.
The Mechanical Turk. Not the mechanical turkey - a top secret government project.
Today there is enough of us for the computers to treat us as a resource and Google’s latest project - Image Labeler is another example of this as they aim to index everything. Image Labeler works as a little game to keep our simple brains entertained; you are paired with another human somewhere around the world and each are shown the same image from Google Images. You then have 30 seconds to describe the image and if you both ended up typing the same thing you get a number of points and therefore Google know what the image is of. Cracking. But this was just the beginning…
Continue reading ‘Don’t trust a picture by it’s label…’
Today I made a infinite loop vortex into another dimension using a webcam, a monitor and a tear in the space-time continiuum. I’ve dropped 2 can’s of Coke Zero into this wormhole so I’m expecting to hear from Han that Jabba the Hutt is enjoying this new 1 calorie carbonated beverage from the gods.
Check out the vid but be careful - there’s no coming back.
To laugh. It’s what separates us from the animals. Except the monkeys. And dogs. And rats. Oh those rascally rats - squeaking away every Thursday watching re-runs of season 4 Friends.
“So then I said - ‘why the long face!’”
If I were a rat for a day how would I know how to laugh at my fellow plague bearer’s jokes? Would it be a ‘eeekeeek’, a ’squeeky-ekey-ekey’ or just an ‘ekekeke’? A difficult social situation for all of us. In a similar fashion, human migration to the web means we also have these issues when laughing over the internet.
You are having a cheeky IM session and someone busts the classic:
‘Did you hear about the Hollywood actress who got stabbed, Reese something
‘Witherspoon?’
‘No with a knife’
Wham - you are beside yourself with laughter. But how to react to his? How do you type your laugh? With a ‘heh?’, a ‘heehee’ or a ‘haha’? You are probably worried about sounding patronising, mildly confused or just plain mental and this is why you are here. A guide to better laughing through internet…
